Dayton artist selected for billboard

The work of Dayton artist Richard Thompson is on display on a Portland billboard. He was selected as one of 15 Oregon artists for a contemporary art exhibit called “Portland2014: A Biennial of Contemporary Art.”

A 14-foot by 48-foot rendition of Thompson’s painting “Prairie #18” can be seen at Northeast Grand Avenue and Everett Street in Portland. It will remain up until April 27.

Thompson grew up on a farm in Dayton. After graduating from Dayton High, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

He went on to become dean of the school of art and design at Alfred University in New York and serve as a professor of painting at the University of Texas at Austin.

He has maintained a studio in Oregon since the early 1990s. He returned to Dayton in 2011 to work full time at a studio there.

Thompson has work in permanent collections throughout the U.S. and abroad. He has exhibited in several cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and Palm Desert Museum in Palm Springs, Calif. He has also staged many one-person exhibits in the Northeast and Southwest.

The exhibition is being organized by the Disjecta Contemporary Art Center. For more information, visit www.richardthompsonart.com or www.disjecta.org.